In the year AD 79, on the
morning of August 24, people in Pompeii were going to market. Pompeii
was a Roman city of 15,000 inhabitants, small but prosperous. People who
did not feel like cooking were going to one of the many public kitchens
where soups and stews were bubbling on the fire. In its shops fresh
chickens, fish, eggs, olive oil, herbs and dates were being sold. A
baker and his wife were selling bread and rolls fresh from their oven.
They had done well and had shown it by having the walls of their house
decorated with colourful frescoes. One of them was the double portrait
A Baker and His Wife. The baker holds a scroll which may have borne
the text of the couple's marriage contract, his "master
baker's certificate" or perhaps a recipe. His wife is
holding a stylus for writing and a wax tablet. Perhaps it signifies that
she does the books for the bakery, perhaps she is proud of her literacy.
The picture was probably intended to advertise the couple's success to
future generations.
At ten o'clock in the morning of August 24, the fresco,
the couple and the entire city were buried under a several-metre thick
layer of ash, pumice and lava. Pompeii is situated at the foot of Mt
Vesuvius, but the volcano had not stirred since the city was founded;
nor was there any warning that it was about to erupt — much less that it
was about to erupt in the way that it did. When Vesuvius blew the plug
of its gigantic crater into the air, an apocalyptic hail of stones and
millions of tons of hot ash made Pompeii as dark as night. People fled
in panic into entries and cellars but there was no escape, the falling
ash crushed buildings and burned through wooden floors. People passing
through the forum were killed by falling columns. Sixty prisoners
awaiting gladiatorial combat were suffocated where they were interned.
The owner of the "Villa of Diome-des" died with the keys to his house m
his hand. The lady of the "House of the Faun" was buried under the roof
of her hall with the jewellery she had grabbed to take with her. The hot
ash enveloped her neighbour's dog
where he was chained up. Pompeii was lost under a
mountain of ash within a few hours; only a handful of people escaped.
Plinv the Younger (с 61—c.113) witnessed the
inferno from the Bay of Naples as an eighteen-year-old. He wrote that,
of the people in the area, "most prayed to the gods. Others, however,
explained that there were no more gods anywhere; the last night on earth
had plunged the world in eternal darkness". There was no question of
rebuilding Pompeii, the ash hardened into rock and it was not until 1748
that the rediscovered ruins — especially some well-preserved interior
frescoes — created a sensation throughout Europe. Along with
neighbouring Herculaneum, which suffered the same fate, Pompeii provides
us with incomparable evidence of what daily life was like in ancient
Rome.
